Just Write {28}

March 26, 2012

I reached up and pulled on my ear lobe and then pulled again and again. I don’t know why, really. Just something to do, something repetitive besides answering Asher’s question, the same one, coming again from the back seat.

I don’t know, honey. I just don’t know. I don’t know what else to say about it. He asks the world’s cutest questions and so many of them don’t have answers.

It struck me that my ear lobe is the kind of soft that aging brings, like the space between my neck and chin. It’s as if the skin has been stretched by gravity for long enough to have given up.

The boys (and I’m sure very soon, their sister) tell me that I’m getting old. I laugh when they say that, but I’m sure this opinion won’t change. They can only see my outsides with fine lines and dark circles below the eyes. It makes perfect sense to them, their mother being old in a way they will never feel when they are 36.

So this is one of my best kept mom secrets–what they can’t see, past my softening skin, is the young me that’s inside and kept there because of them, not giving up.

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This is the 28th installment of Just Write, an exercise in free writing your ordinary and extraordinary moments. {Please see the details here.} I would love to read your freely written words so join me and link up below. You can add the url of your post at any time. Just be sure it’s a link to your Just Write post, not to your main page. Then please link back to this post in your post so people know where to go if they’d like to join in.) (Any links not following those two guidelines will be deleted.)

Also. Please take a moment to visit someone else who has linked up! It’s a really good way to meet new writers and get inspired by the meaning behind their moments. Word?

oh yes… this aging. I remember with horror my parents 30th birthday. The black balloons… the over the hill everything. I was SURE I would never be that old… to know that their lives were only just beginning. Makes me smile.tara pohlkotte recently posted..My Mother Lilacs and I

comedian carol burnett pulled her earlobe twice at the end of every performance as a way of honoring her mother. yours could be something cool like that :)adriana willey recently posted..love turned brave

It is daily, the changes I see in the mirror and can do nothing about. It is hard, but you are so right, we stay young on the inside and that is what matters most. My mother-in-law is beautiful in every way and most of her closest friends are my age. I want to be just like her when I grow up!Shelly Miller recently posted..Finding Your Voice

Oh so true. My grandmother told me (she’s 88) that we will always feel about 27 inside. Just nobody can really see that anymore..unless we happen to do a cartwheel in the front yard and our panties show.tracy@sellabitmum recently posted..A Picture Without Make-up

I often wonder how I got so old so quickly. Where did the young me go? Most of the time I still feel 16. Then I look in the mirror and wonder who that old chick is and where she came from. Sigh. Great post!Semi Domesticated Mama recently posted..The Other Side of Bullying

Very rarely do I feel like I’m really in my thirties. I still feel like a teenager sometimes. Same angst. Same immaturity. But someone gave me this big house to live in and children to take care of!

Then I look in the mirror and see the sun spots and fine lines around my eyes and I realize, yep, I’m in my thirties with two children. And yes, this house is actually mine.molly recently posted..weekend

A friend and I were talking yesterday about how children simultaneously make you feel young and old. We enjoy the carefree moments of play, but then struggle to keep up with them.Bridget recently posted..The Magic of Words

This is so true. I am often torn between my own identity as a girl and a woman; a young person or an old person. And I realize that to my son, I am old, but in my mind I still can remember my days of young, and hold on to them tightly. Lovely post!Julia recently posted..Reflection and an Anniversary

Just to let you know it still feels that way when you turn 48. Now I have to remind myself. You have to check thinking young with how you really look. Not to let getting older change what I want to do…just what I look like doing it. No string bikinis except on faraway islands where I do not know a soul for 1000 miles (except my husband.)Jamie recently posted..Born free. Small amphibians fight for their right to be green.

As my grandma got very, very old, what stayed was her earliest memories – poems and nursery rhymes, her childhood nickname. We are, all of us, young within. It’s why the lines are shocking to ourselves, who should know our years.Kate recently posted..Evening glories

I remember holding my mom while she cried when she turned 35. I wanted to make her feel better, but I remember thinking she really was old. In a very short time, it will be my turn to cry.The Mommy Psychologist recently posted..I’m so Green I Eat My Own Placenta